A brand statement : Results of a personal branding exercise I didn’t know I needed.
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Personal branding is, to borrow a modish term, a thing. Not that it hasn’t always been a thing; more that the thing is now evident and underlined rather than subtle and inferred. It’s in the open these days.
The primary reason it’s a thing is competition. A personal brand - in the form of a personal brand statement - acts as a signal and gives the brandholder a chance to establish differentiation: This is who I am and what I do, people. It’s my location on the professional map.
Prior to last week, I’d not been asked for my personal brand statement. Slogans and Myers-Briggs types and interesting facts and two-truths-and-a-lie, yes. But not a personal brand statement. As a brand person, the request was timely given a recent conversation with Eric B (also the inspiration behind Sand Mode). Oh, the places one good chat can take you. 🙏 again, E.
My target criteria:
I want a brand statement that’s aspirational but doesn’t read like something out of a comic book; e.g. leaps tall buildings in a single bound, am the best there is at what I do & etc.
My personal brand statement should be rooted *and* reaching. It should say, I know where I’m from and where I’m going.
It must be short. Preferably. (I’m still working on this.)
It should be memorable to the people I’d like to remember it.
I would like it to be distinct.
The traits -and the brand - should not be presumptuous.
After 12 iterations, I landed where my conversation with Eric ended and my list started. Result:
I will help you get unstuck.
Because like it or not and as mentioned in a recent post, Sand Mode: a concept for getting unstuck, everyone is acquainted with getting stuck and has felt the relief of getting unstuck. The people who tend to help people get unstuck have themselves been stuck many times before and helped others re-find their way. Inexperienced people can’t help you get unstuck. Impatient people can’t help you get unstuck. People who have challenged themselves and others and sometimes won and sometimes lost can help you get unstuck. People who are willing to fail can help you get unstuck. So can people who have more often and repeatedly found a way forward. I think those people are the masters of unstuck. I aspire to count myself among them. We’ll see.
I’ve taken this unstuck thing for a walk and 10/10 times it has generated a grin, a nod, an affirmation that yes, it makes sense for someone like me to make a claim like that. Especially in domains where I’ve generated results; e.g. marketing, not woodworking; strategy, not refrigerator repair. [Author pats himself on the back.]
I’ll help you get unstuck.
And if you’re stuck trying to develop your own brand statement, hopefully this helps. If it doesn’t, call a friend.
More soon.
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